Forty Thousand Feet
by Love Still Stands
Summary: Set a month after Chuck said "I love you too", this is my take on how Blair tried to reach Chuck, and how Chuck tried to let her. One-shot.


Chuck Bass was gazing out of the window. It was 3am, and the Bass Jet was flying over the Atlantic Ocean, so there was nothing to look at but the empty night. The moon and stars were hidden behind inky-black clouds, just as they had been on the night when it had happened. The night when Blair had called herself _his one and only_, just as his father's death had made her the _one and only_ person left in the world who truly loved him.

Chuck glanced over to where she was sleeping. Despite his brooding, he found himself smiling warmly at the sight of her. She looked particularly beautiful at that moment, with her espresso-coloured hair fanned out on the Egyptian cotton, her skin still a little flushed from their lovemaking.

A week ago he'd spent several hundred thousand dollars on a bed which made relaxing - and doing other things - on the jet almost as comfortable as in his (or, as he now thought of it, _their_) bed at home. Blair had given him one of her special looks when he'd told her about it. The one that showed that, in her opinion at least, Chuck was permanently out of the gutter and up on a pedestal. If only Chuck had shared her certainty about where he belonged.

Of course, Chuck had excelled at gift-giving from the very start, with the Erickson Beamon necklace that had saved her seventeenth birthday. In hindsight he'd realised: that delicate string of flowers and diamonds had been the first of many ribbon-tied "I love you's" that he'd given to Blair. He was telling Blair he loved her with presents before he'd even admitted it to himself, and a month ago, Chuck had finally given Blair the biggest present of all: his long-hidden, partly-broken heart.

Or had he? He loved her, there was no doubt about that. So much that it terrified him. Sometimes he looked at her and felt a rush of love that almost knocked him off his feet. She had seen him cry, seen him naked, even seen him (Chuck Bass!) panicking, usually over the fate of Bass Industries. Yet there she was, radiant in her pale silk slip. And here he was, with the darkness.

* * *

><p>Blair Waldorf was pretending to be asleep. The bed - one of the countless ways in which Chuck had made his life more Blair-friendly over the last month - was impossibly comfortable, but she couldn't relax knowing that he was awake and unhappy.<p>

As fun as it was to date a guy who had a private jet, Blair often thought that she would happily surrender the many luxuries in exchange for a Chuck who could sleep soundly next to her for a whole night. She thought sadly of the first time they'd actually _slept _together, the night of his father's funeral, when she'd watched him carefully until he finally fell asleep. And how she'd woken up with a note for company, and with Chuck halfway to Asia. She supposed she should be grateful that Chuck was now putting yards, rather than continents, between them, and that he always slipped back into bed in the early morning so that she woke up in his arms.

Hell, she _was_ grateful. For the first time in her life Blair felt loved, admired and adored every second of the day. Having said those three words once, Chuck seemed unable to hold them back, telling her he loved her over breakfast, at the opera, whenever she said something particularly "Waldorfian." He'd said them with his body too, and during their first few weeks together they'd barely got out of bed, and Blair's voice had become hoarse from moaning, and Chuck's vocabulary had been limited to "fuck", "yes" and "Blair". And that had been wonderful, but the weeks since had been even better, with Chuck welcoming her into every part of his life, every part of himself.

Every part except the one which stayed up fretting when he thought Blair was asleep. She hadn't forgotten that it was barely eight months since his father had died. Seven months since she'd called him down from a rooftop. Chuck was still grieving, and although Bart was gone, Blair suspected that she was still only his _second-_toughest critic. That Chuck sat up at night spending long silent hours with the dead.

* * *

><p>Blair could feel Chuck's eyes on her, and took the opportunity to pretend to wake up.<p>

"See something you like, Bass?" she asked. She got out of bed and sauntered over to where he was sitting, enjoying the way in which his eyes opened a little wider, drinking in the sight of her.

"'Like' isn't really a strong enough word, Waldorf" he said. "'Worship' would be closer." He smiled in a hopelessly smitten way as she sat herself down on his lap, snuggling up to him. "You're so lovely, Blair," he murmured into her hair, kissing her forehead.

Blair smiled, touched. One of her hands moved to stroke his hair, whilst the other rested on his pyjama-clad chest. She was telling him wordlessly that she loved him, that she'd kill all his demons for him if only he'd let her. That he could keep climbing onto ledges and contemplating the void, because she would keep calling him back into the light.

* * *

><p>Chuck loved how Blair touched him. Apart from a few hugs from Lily and the odd backslap from Nate, almost all of the physical contact Chuck had experienced in his life had been sexual, and paid for. Never before had someone held his hand or stroked his hair, with no expectation of an orgasm or a stuffed envelope afterwards.<p>

It was too good to last. He was, after all, Chuck Bass, and one day he'd go so far into the shadows that Blair would be unable to pull him back out. Maybe he'd go so far that she wouldn't even want to save him.

Still, it was difficult for anyone, even someone as pessimistic as Chuck, to feel unhappy when they had Blair Waldorf cuddling up to them. He allowed himself to luxuriate in the smell of her hair, and how warm she felt against him. His fingers traced "I love you" on the bare skin of her arm.

After a few minutes Blair slid off his lap and stood up, holding out her hand to lead him back to bed. He took one last glance out of the window and saw that the sky was slowly turning grey, proof that dawn was coming. It wasn't pretty, this pre-dawn murkiness, but it was a wholly necessary part of the transition from dark to light. He would always love her, and at that moment, somewhere between heaven and earth, and night and day, Chuck felt that love might actually be enough. He took her hand.


End file.
